fFor the Free Democrats, the repeat election in Berlin ended no differently than almost all elections to state parliaments since the federal election on September 26, 2021: Instead of at least returning to the opposition benches, the party failed at the five percent hurdle.
Nevertheless, the performance of the Berlin FDP is not a tragedy in itself. Since the reunification of the city, which had been divided for decades, the state association has had to cope with many an election result with a number of less than five before the decimal point – and returned to the House of Representatives after one or two electoral periods.
Nevertheless, it is worrying that the party in the city in which it makes its mark on federal politics cannot convince even five percent of the voters that it is an unmistakable and indispensable voice in the concert of the parties. On Sunday, this was presumably because middle-class voters thought their vote was safer with the CDU than with a party whose success curve is more like that of a yo-yo.
Lots of tactics, little commitment
But Sundays of this kind are now the rule and not the exception for the FDP. This probably also has something to do with the perception of the achievements of the Free Democrats as one of the three parties that support the federal government.
The interactions between the state and federal levels are uncertain, no matter how much the party chairman and federal finance minister, Christian Lindner, and his deputy, Wolfgang Kubicki, argued about the profile of their party as the smallest of the three partners in a “progressive coalition” on the day after the Berlin FDP fell again. However, it would indeed be worth considering whether the programmatic offer of the FDP to middle-class voters has not been so meager for years that it is elected at best for tactical reasons and not as an expression of medium- or long-term party ties.
Because it is one thing to adorn oneself for decades with the label of the party of civil rights, the other to unilaterally define them as defensive rights against the state. FDP Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann is at liberty to see the legalization of cannabis use as a flagship project of his judicial policy. But what the “right to intoxication” means to some, the right to protection from the consequences of the right to intoxication is to others – no different with alcohol than with cannabis.
Cannabis policy as a symptom
The health consequences of cannabis use are far from trivial, as is evident in states where evidence-based studies on the impact of cannabis legalization are now available. If the number of children who have to be treated with symptoms of poisoning because of the use of cannabis products such as biscuits or gummy bears increases significantly, even though cannabis is actually quite harmless, then this is more than worrying – not to mention the often chronic damage caused by it intensive cannabis use. But you hear nothing about that from the Ministry of Justice or the SPD-led Ministry of Health.
The FDP’s understanding of freedom can also be seen from the fact that the party draws no small part of its self-confidence from the fact that for decades it has blocked every regulation that allowed digitally generated connection data to be stored in such a way that the security authorities were not able to track them down serious crimes are reliably available – also and not least when it comes to crimes in which children and those in custody are subjected to cruel violence.
The FDP sacrifices the rights of children and young people and their protection on the altar of an allegedly liberal understanding of the state. To do this, it narrows its view of the state’s duty to protect. The party should therefore not be surprised if many citizens reject it because they distrust carelessness and do not find themselves in the niches served by the FDP.
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